Memeorandum

February 03, 2013

Making Stuff Up At The Times (Gun Control Safety, Ongoing...)

The NY Times editors are back to gun control and back to making stuff up. This morning, their target is Gayle Trotter, who spoke at the Senate hearing last week. Her message, ever so vexing to the Times - women with guns are safer against criminals.

Their intro:

Dangerous Gun Myths

The debate over what to do to reduce gun violence in America hit an
absurd low point on Wednesday when a Senate witness tried to portray a
proposed new ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines as some
sort of sexist plot that would disproportionately hurt vulnerable women
and their children.

The witness was Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women’s
Forum, a right-wing public policy group that provides pseudofeminist
support for extreme positions that are in fact dangerous to women. She
told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the limits on firepower
proposed by Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, would harm women
because an assault weapon “in the hands of a young woman defending her
babies in her home becomes a defense weapon.” She spoke of the “peace of
mind” and “courage” a woman derives from “knowing she has a
scary-looking gun” when she’s fighting violent criminals.

The Times editors promptly descend into fantasy and fiction:

It is not at all clear where Ms. Trotter gained her insight into
confrontations between women and heavily armed intruders, since it is
not at all clear that sort of thing happens often.

What is very clear is that the Times editors either did not read her testimony or chose to misrepresent it. She opened with the story of Sarah McKinley, the Oklahoma woman who spent twenty minutes on the phone with a 911 dispatcher and eventually used her shotgun on one of two intruders. (As to how often this type of incident happens, I would say, more often than Times readers may realize, since their first mention of Ms. McKinely is in this editorial).

Ms. Trotter went on:

Guns make women safer. Most violent offenders actually do not use firearms, which makes guns the great equalizer. In fact, over 90 percent of violent crimes occur without a firearm. Over the most recent decade, from 2001 to 2010, “about 6 percent to 9 percent of all violent victimizations were committed with firearms,” according to a federal study.1 Violent criminals rarely use a gun to threaten or attack women. Attackers use their size and physical strength, preying on women who are at a severe disadvantage.

So Ms. Trotter talked about violent criminals who are equipped with typical male size and strength and specifically noted they are unlikely to be carrying a firearm. In TimesWorld, that became "heavily armed intruders". Hmm, maybe the editors meant "heavy armed" intruders - sort of a "Popeye guns" thing.

The editors continue:

It is tempting to dismiss her notion that an AR-15 is a woman’s best
friend as the kooky reflex response of someone ideologically opposed to
gun control laws...

The editors then offer an argument that makes sense if you don't think about it:

The cost-benefit balance of having a gun in the home is especially
negative for women, according to a 2011 review by David Hemenway,
director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Far from making
women safer, a gun in the home is “a particularly strong risk factor”
for female homicides and the intimidation of women.

In domestic violence situations, the risk of homicide for women
increased eightfold when the abuser had access to firearms, according to
a study published in The American Journal of Public Health in 2003.
Further, there was “no clear evidence” that victims’ access to a gun
reduced their risk of being killed. Another 2003 study, by Douglas Wiebe
of the University of Pennsylvania, found that females living with a gun
in the home were 2.7 times more likely to be murdered than females with
no gun at home.

That is good intel for women in an abusive relationship, but maybe not so important for the rest of us. Which, as an aside, is an ongoing problem for the Nanny State - good advice for the population as a whole (Don't be in an abusive relationship with a guy with a gun!) may not be relevant advice for many members of that population. I'm not an epidemologist but this seems like an example of the Prevention Paradox, where a frequent puzzle is whether to attempt to treat the whole population or just high-risk sub-groups (and a Rose by any other name would still be fascinating).

Pressing on:

Regulating guns, on the other hand, can reduce that risk. An analysis by
Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that in states that required a
background check for every handgun sale, women were killed by intimate
partners at a much lower rate.

They don't provide a source and I can't run down that reference so I don't know what to conclude from their assertion, but here is a Mayors Against Gun Violence White Paper, which includes in the footnotes this paper:

Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results From a Multisite Case Control Study

Among the conclusions overlooked by the Times editors:

Although the abuser’s access to a firearm increased femicide risk,
victims’ risk of being killed by their intimate partner was lower when
they lived apart from the abuser and had sole access to a firearm
(adjusted OR = 0.22).

To be fair, that was inconclusive:

A victim’s access to a gun could plausibly reduce her risk of being
killed, at least if she does not live with the abuser. A small
percentage (5%) of both case and control women lived apart from the
abuser and owned a gun, however, and there was no clear evidence of
protective effects.

In any case, with these statistics the Times is not promoting the assault weapons ban but instead is arguing for broader background checks, which looks like a winning idea with the public.

They close with a strawman:

The idea that guns are essential to home defense and women’s safety is a
myth.

"Essential"? No one is arguing that guns are a "must have", only that they ought to be a matter of individual choice.

It should not be allowed to block the new gun controls that the
country so obviously needs.

They led with their assault on 'assault weapons' and magazines and closed with statistics about background checks, so I guess it is still obvious to the editors that their full agenda is urgently and obviously needed. As to whether broader background checks would actually stop abusive males from obtaining guns (legally or illegally), I have no idea.

NOTE TO SCHOOL ADMNINISTRATORS EVERYWHERE: If an earnest teacher overhears two teen lads talking about "Popeye guns", don't take 'em down too hard without a bit more info.

SBW, as I read it he is not even referring to COs at all and in fact juxtaposes these guys who were trying to receive a medical deferment with COs.
Not sure why or if you were rejected from CO status and I have no doubt guys who should have been granted it were denied, but these guys he's referring to weren't even trying for it. You don't become a CO by faking schizophrenia.

Since it looks like we have a technical delay due to field lighting problems here's a link to the famous Roman stoic Seneca, writing about the importance of reading good books some 2000 years ago. Scroll down just a bit to Epistle 2:
ON DISCURSIVENESS IN READING.

Not, I suspect, a very fun time guy at a Pub, but wisdom in his writings. BTW, I finished "US Grant's Memoir's" coming home today. I thought that an excellent read and highly recommend it. Now I am on to stuff Seneca may not have approved of, a new history on Dino-Fornication The Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex

Already by Chapter One I have penis envy of some Argentinian Duck! (1.3 feet!) Lord love a duck!

Ig. I did just gloss over it, saw the CO reference, and tons more words. I will read it tomorrow.

I don't expect anyone to understand the complexity of the late 60s-70s. I am thoroughly comfortable with the military and could have been an effective soldier. At the same time, CO status had solid reasoning behind it at the time.

There was massive defensive holding on the right side of the Raven's line during that Safety. The defender was completely bear-hugging the 49er trying to get at the punter. But oh well. Glad it turned out to be a decent game, and that there was at least one redeeming advertisement.

Daddy, I wouldn't know for fact, but apparently it is better to love a duck than have the duck love you.

RSE,

Truer words, never spoken. From page 20-22, some unexpected info on duck wangdoodles:

The Duck penis is made erect through filling with lymph fluid rather than blood...Duck penis's have another interesting ability; they can literally explode out of the duck's body.

colleagues from Yale...published a paper in a prestigious scientific journal...research concerned the Male Muscovy Duck...and the speed of their penis eversion (the coming out or unraveling of the enormous corkscrew shaped penis). The first step was to study how professional "duck fluffers" collect semen for artificial insemination...

...The Duck fluffer then whips the drake (male duck) off the female and quickly touches the cloaca whilst holding up a specially made corkscrew shaped glass jar to catch the penis exploding out of the body and ejaculating as it fully extends. In the lab the researchers measured this phenomenon and found that the entire 8-inch duck penis would extend from inside the cloaca to outside and fully erect in just 0.348 seconds. (Next time you are barreling down the highway at 75 miles per hour, just think you are going as fast as a Muscovy Duck can erect his penis.)

After a really awful 1st half, the game got quite exciting. I have had too much food, too many cocktails, and quite a bit of drama (did Mama Harbaugh fiddle with the electric circuit to even the playing field for her boys? lol).

You know that when the MFM pulls out all the stops to smear somebody, as they have with Gayle Trotter, they are afraid of the truth.

The truth is, an AR-15 is the ideal defense weapon for most women, and banning them will impact women dispropotionately, and make them less safe.

As a man, I can use just about any gun in the safe, because they were all designed for me. But women, because of smaller hands and lesser upper body strength, do much better with the light recoil and high volume of fire they can get from an AR-15, and features like pistol grips, foregrips, barrel shrouds and adjustable stocks are what makes the weapon even more effective for them.

But these are the very features they want to ban. It is almost as if they want to disarm women!

You have to think back to Paul Harvey's hay day. He was talk radio. I can remember many a elder friend, sibling, aunt that managed to be near the radio at 11:45 (or whenever ) to catch his broadcast. It was definitely a red state thing.

Morning all. I had a feeling it was going to be a great Super Bowl (and that the Ravens woudl win), but I also just didn't feel like watching it. So I didn't (after the first quarter). Glad it was fun though.

The comment that was heard a lot in the Old West, just as it is today, goes like this: "I thought he was reaching for a gun. It looked like he was going for a gun." Really? So then if guns are illegal this wouldn't happen?? Oh puhleeze. People are gonna have guns whether the idiots on capitol hill pass some asinine bill "banning" them or not. It won't matter if they try to ban hand guns or "assault weapons". If people want them they'll get them, and if criminals want them they already have them. Do you think they run right up and register them?! Yeah, who's funnin' who?

Taking guns away only gives the WADC criminals more power than they can handle. We've seen what they do with it, so far.